49ers Foundation Advances STEAM Learning For 60,000 Bay Area Kids

On the field, the San Francisco 49ers are known for their five Super Bowl wins and their recent move to the state-of-the-art Levi's Stadium.

49ers Center Daniel Kilgore speaks to a group of third and fourth graders about the connections between STEAM and football.Photo courtesy the 49ers Foundation

Not content with utilizing the stadium solely for team activities, the 49ers Foundation has made space for a monumental philanthropic endeavor at their Santa Clara, CA facility. In partnership with Chevron, the Foundation is hosting hundreds of elementary school-aged children daily through the 49ers STEAM Education Program.

STEAM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics, forms the backbone of many philanthropic education programs around the country.

The 49ers Foundation leadership realized that STEAM is engrained in the dynamics and history of football, as well as the stadium itself, and has dedicated space within the 49ers Museum to educate students from around the San Francisco Bay Area on the myriad ways football and STEAM overlap.

Hosting hundreds of students a day at Levi's Stadium, the 49ers STEAM Education Program has the capacity to serve 60,000 students per year. The kids are bussed in from all over the Bay Area at no cost to their school districts. Fifty-six percent of the schools served by the 49ers STEAM Program are Title 1 schools, which means their students come from primarily low-income communities.

Compliant with the Obama-era Common Core Standards, the 49ers STEAM Program is a full-day program employing formally trained teachers who lead students in STEAM-based projects which encourage friendly competition between groups, such as designing a new football helmet or building a stadium out of craft supplies.

Technology plays a major role in the 49ers' presentation. From tablets and interactive tables with touch screens to demonstrations of the green innovations utilized at Levi's Stadium, technology has been woven into the fabric of the program as a supplement to promote STEAM learning and impart twenty-first century life skills.

In addition to a crash course on the history of the 49ers, the students are taken through multiple classrooms where they receive interactive lessons on how football intersects with STEAM and vice versa. Subjects include Levi's Stadium's innovative irrigation system—the 49ers boast the first rooftop garden on an NFL Stadium—and a movement lab, in which students learn the science behind throwing a football and other movements perpetuated by NFL players.

Students from local elementary schools take part in 49ers STEAM Education Program activities.Courtesy 49ers Foundation

Justin Prettyman, the Executive Director of the 49ers Foundation, touts the team effort it took in creating and growing the program but says it starts and ends with the York family, who own the team and sit on the foundation's board. "Their passion is palpable," says Prettyman, who came to the 49ers from the Red Sox Foundation.

Other integral players include Chevron, which funds the 49ers STEAM Program in partnership with the Yorks, and the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. Together, these partners also built two technology-filled 'Fab Labs' at a high school and middle school in Santa Clara.

According to Prettyman, the foundation is "going through a renaissance, a rebirth." The 49ers, who recently had a change in leadership as general manager Trent Baalke was replaced by John Lynch, are looking to find ways the team and the foundation can work together to bring fun and educational events to the community.

"The challenge is looking at how we can do things differently through football in particular, and how we can leverage passion for the NFL and especially the Niners, and turn it into a vehicle for social change."

Each student who comes to the 49ers STEAM Education Program receives a collectible learning playbook.Courtesy 49ers Foundation

As it looks to improve upon its own programming, the 49ers Foundation—whose tagline is "Tackling Possible"—is also consulting other teams and foundations on their own STEAM initiatives, as well as providing targeted professional development to hundreds of Bay Area teachers.

"I think it's important for people to know that this is not a checkbook charity, " says Prettyman. "It's really not about the money, it's about the impact."

The 49ers were named Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year by ESPN in July.

With an eye on community impacts, Aliko covers the NBA, sports biz and philanthropy for Forbes.com and the SportsMoney Blog. He honed his voice at Bleacher Report, working as a Front Page Editor and Featured Columnist. He currently hosts and produces the daily Locked on War...